2. THE DRAMA.--The spirit of an age is more completely represented by its poetry than by its prose composition, and accordingly we may best trace the character of the three different stages of civilization among the Greeks in the three grand divisions of their poetry. The epic belongs to their monarchical period, when the minds of the people were impregnated and swayed by legends handed down from antiquity. Elegiac, iambic, and lyric poetry arose in the more stirring and agitated times which accompanied the development of republican governments, times in which each individual gave vent to his personal aims and wishes, and all the depths of the human breast were unlocked by the inspirations of poetry. And now, when at the summit of Greek civilization, in the very prime of Athenian power and freedom, we see dramatic poetry spring up as the organ of the prevailing thoughts and feelings of the time, we are naturally led to ask how it comes that this style of poetry agreed so well with the spirit of the age, and so far outstripped its competitors in the contest for public favor. Dramatic poetry, as its name implies, represents _actions_, which are not, as in the epos, merely narrated, but seem to take place before the eyes of the spectator. The epic poet appears to regard the events, which he relates from afar, as objects of calm contemplation and admiration, and is always conscious of the great interval between him and them, while the dramatist plunges with his entire soul into the scenes of human life, and seems himself to experience the events which he exhibits to our view. The drama comprehends and develops the events of human life with a force and depth which no other style of poetry can reach.